Thank god, Chris Hayes is serving as a node for opposition to the Syrian strike. On last night’s show he did the Stephen Colbert thing, but more subtly, playing earnest devil’s advocate for the strike, while continually graveling at the plans.
“I still haven’t heard anything convincing. Saddam Hussein used these weapons twice.”
Saying that Republicans were the base of opposition to the strike, Hayes interviewed strike opponents Jim Risch, Republican Senator from Idaho, and Bassam Haddad of George Mason University.
Hayes asked Risch, Did anything you heard at the Kerry hearing change your mind today?
Risch: Not really… [A president seeking my support for war] would have to have better answers than what this administration has, as far as making justifications and more importantly to me where are we going with this. What does success look like. What does day two and three and four look like? How are you going to deal with the fallout, assuming Russia reacts adversely…?
Everybody knows that this is not the first time that Assad has used gas against his own people… The other thing that’s overlooked here is that he’s already killed 100,000 people with conventional weapons. That is bad. I don’t want to minimize what this man has done.. On the other hand, I do not buy on to the theory that this is a national security matter for the United States….
Professor Haddad spoke of the confused support for the strike, including the goal of supporting the “settler colonial state of Israel”– have you ever heard those words on cable TV before? — and said a strike will foreclose a political solution, which would involve Russia and the US forcing all parties to the conflict to come together. Haddad:
“A limited strike first of all will not be effective, second of all will make the conflict more volatile and third of all will foreclose any possibility of a political solution down the road. It’s basically eliminating that possibility for the sake of very limited gains that can spin out of control and bring the entire region into this conflict.”
In a subsequent debate on air, Hayes covered himself with MSNBC by having two hawks and one dove, and again, Hayes kept mouthing arguments for a strike, so as to remove the rationale for it.
The dove was Ben Domenech of Heartland Institute, who responded to former national security spokesperson Tom Vietor:
The word you use is punish. This is why it fails the just war test. You have to have just cause, just authority and just result…You don’t have the result being protection for the people.
Hayes finished the debate by making a “definitive statement” as the host:
There is no stupider, more bankrupt reason to go to war than the fear that people will think you’re weak or call you a wimp.
This is starting to sound like West Side Story.
Everybody knows that this is not the first time that Assad has used gas against his own people… The other thing that’s overlooked here is that he’s already killed 100,000 people with conventional weapons. That is bad. I don’t want to minimize what this man has done.. On the other hand, I do not buy on to the theory that this is a national security matter for the United States….
99 out of 100 times you listen to a congressperson, you gotta come away discouraged, even if s/he ostensibly supports your position. Assad “has used gas” multiple times? Assad has “killed 100,000 people with conventional weapons”? what about the evidence of the use of chemical weapons by rebel forces? and reports of the deaths of tens of thousands of alawites and other assad supporters? (videos of cannibalism and summary execution of teenagers by the rebels notwithstanding.) the ignorance and bias is so deeply ingrained you know it would only take one phone call to change this moron’s tune.
I would like to know just when President Assad became the monster and Hitlerish person that Kerry claims he is. Was it before or after he and Mrs. Kerry had dinner with President Assad and his wife?
Kerry has no credibility at all for me. None. Furthermore, I am very disgusted with the use of “boots on the ground” when discussing American armed forces. They are not boots on the ground, they are human beings. It is only one of any number of overused euphemisms, although I find this one particularly Orwellian. When I called my representative and both my senators, part of my message included registering my disgust at it use.
The halls of Congress are full of mad dogs and fools, with a few bright exceptions.
There is no stupider, more bankrupt reason to go to war than the fear that people will think you’re weak or call you a wimp.
The claims that things will only get worse if the USA does nothing, are based upon on an unverifiable hypothesis, that’s incapable of being proven true, since the USA and its Arab allies have already been clandestinely backing and arming foreign insurgents fighting in Syria without permission from the UN Security Council – and things have only gotten worse for the Syrians since that happened.
Chris Hayes is great. I don’t always agree 100%, but the guy is razor sharp with way more than his share of integrity. How brilliant of him to sum up this folly with such a simple, unarguable statement.